Mia Resnicow | Staff Writer
The Anti-Defamation League released its yearly report at the end of 2025, showing significant antisemitic and extremist activity in Pennsylvania, stating that the year 2024 saw an 18% increase in attacks compared to the previous year.
In that report, the ADL counted 9,354 antisemitic incidents across the United States, the highest number recorded by the ADL since it began keeping track in 1979.
The record-breaking number of incidents is vaguely reminiscent of a headline from 25 years ago. In the Feb. 7, 1992, issue of the Jewish Exponent, author Debra Nussbaum Cohen wrote of the ADL’s annual audit in an article titled “’91 record year for anti-Semitic acts, ADL says.”
“The ADL recorded 1,879 acts of violence, threat and harassment against Jews for the year, an 11 percent increase over 1990 and the highest number since the agency began its annual audit of anti-semitic incidents 13 years ago,” she wrote.
“The past year also saw the greatest number of ‘serious crimes’ ever reported, according to the audit, which was released yesterday at ADL’s annual National Executive Committee meeting in Palm Beach, Fla.,” Nussbaum Cohen added.
The survey also focused on college campuses.
“Last year, 101 incidents of anti-Semitism were reported at 60 college campuses, with 23 of the campuses experiencing multiple problems,” Nussbaum Cohen wrote. “Politically related anti-Semitism, which occurred largely in the first two months of 1991 — during the Persian Gulf War — also multiplied.”
The author included common statements sent to Jewish organizations by mail, saying, “Death to Jews” and “All Jews will burn and die in hell.”
Nussbaum Cohen added, “The ADL attributes the overall upsurge in most types of anti-Semitic acts to ‘the erosion of longstanding barriers against the expression of anti-Semitism.’”